Biden Signs Executive Order on Strengthening Cybersecurity Defenses: Feedback Friday

May 14, 2021 – Article posted on Security Week

U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order on improving the country’s cybersecurity defenses. The executive order represents the government’s response to significant attacks carried out by foreign threat actors and focuses on removing barriers to threat information sharing, adopting a zero trust architecture, enhancing the security of the software supply chain by requiring developers to improve their security practices, establishing a Cyber Safety Review Board that will review and assess significant incidents, and standardizing the government’s response to vulnerabilities and incidents.

Industry professionals have shared thoughts on various aspects of the executive order, including benefits and shortcomings.

“This Executive Order is a broad sweeping in terms of both the scope of the order as well as the aggressive timelines laid out by the administration,” said Bryan Orme, Principal and Partner, GuidePoint Security. “Given the assumption that the agencies follow through with adoption of it, which is a large assumption, it should make a significant positive impact on the strength of US Cyber Defenses. The specificity of some of the controls and strategies that they call out should go a long way in terms of moving the US’s cyber defense posture from a primarily compliance-driven perspective to an actual risk based perspective. This will be a huge shift for most government agencies, but provided that they follow through with the Order I believe it will significantly increase the security posture and resilience of the federal government.”

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